Posts Tagged ‘Stardew Valley’

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Pure Farming 2018 is out now. Farming Sim games now come from several competitive developers but also that competition leaves me confused because most entries in the Farm Gaming World seem interchangeable. I’m missing a key element in what draws people in, but this genre keeps raking in money hand over fist, so the problem must be with me. Let’s take a look at what Pure Farming 2018 is bringing to the table.

Update: Whoops, I got a bit carried away in writing this game up the first time. I have some frustrations with the genre and it got a bit out of hand. Sorry to any digital farmers whom may have been offended.

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Hello chum! Sit down and have a nice glass of water and a pack of Bombay mix. That’s how we greet our closest friends on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. This week, best pals John and Brendan discuss how friendship is handled in videogames, and what characters felt most like close buddies. John felt a kinship with Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins, and sees Lydia from Skyrim as Wilson the football from Castaway. Whereas Brendan felt a habitual closeness to the undead woman in Dark Souls who sold him poisonous arrows. Takes all sorts, really.

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My farm in Stardew Valley is a place of solace. It’s a shrine to quiet contemplation, a valuable retreat from the demands of sociability, a hidey-hole built just for me and my thoughts. Why would I want to invite someone in and spoil all that?

Actually, none of that’s true. I’d love to romp around Stardew Valley with a friend in tow, and I’ll soon get the chance to: Stardew Valley’s 1.3 update has entered its QA phase. Update 1.3 will bring official support for online multiplayer, along with other (smaller) new features like the signs pictured above. In a shocking example of northern hemisphere bias, dev Eric Barone’s blogpost also mentions that he’s “still shooting for a spring release for the beta” – so any time from March through to June.

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It’s typical, eh: you wait ages for a Stardew-o-Harvest-a-Crossing crafty farming daily life sim, then two come along to early access at once. My Time At Portia today delivers a cheery vision of the post-apocalypse, while Staxel here has more of a fairytale vibe and Minecraft-y style, not to mention online multiplayer. Yes, it is weird that neither crafty farmy miner has flinched in this game of chicken. But hey, they’re here now. Let’s peek at Staxel. Read the rest of this entry »

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We’ve already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin’ and a-shakin’ in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol’ Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well – as do a host of other games from 2017’s great and good.

Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you’re so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I’d have gone for in each category.Read the rest of this entry »

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Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol’ breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.

Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.

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As we lay 2017 to rest, let us remember all of the wonderful games that flickered across our screens and occupied our hearts and minds. But now we must promise never to think of them again because times have changed. This is 2018 and if we’ve learned one thing from the few hours we’ve spent in it it’s that there are games everywhere. Every firework that exploded in the many midnights of New Year’s celebrations was stuffed with games and they were still raining down across the world this morning. We cannot stop them, we cannot contain them, but we can attempt to understand them.

Hundreds of them will be worth our time and attention, but we’ve selected a few of the ones that excite us most as we prepare for another year of splendid PC gaming. There’s something for everyone, from Aunt Maude, the military genius, to merry Ian Rogue, the man who hates permadeath and procedural generation with a passion.

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Ah, life on the farm. Working with your hands in the slurry, watching the pigs wallow in the antibiotics, drinking a shot of warm, unpasteurised milk straight from the teat. What simple pleasures farming sim Stardew Valley affords us. Perhaps a few more, says developer ConcernedApe aka Eric Barone. He recently tweeted some upcoming changes, including new town events and the ability to change professions later in the game. Read the rest of this entry »

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It seems IGN’s recent purchase of Humble Bundle hasn’t compromised their ability to put together a pack of awesome games. For the next 5 days, The Humble Care Package Bundle offers 27 games–including Stardew Valley, Darkest Dungeon, and Pony Island–for $30 and all of the money is going to emergency relief charities, which makes this one well worth checking out.

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While we wait for online cooperative multiplayer to officially arrive in Stardew Valley — early 2018, last we heard — creator Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone has shared a little update. It’s “coming along great”, he says, and “already really fun”. I mean, sure he would say that, but it’s Stardew Valley in multiplayer so I’ll believe that. The wait continues but Barone does share a nice picture of a farm he worked on: Read the rest of this entry »

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An unusual bug has been discovered in feel-good farming game Stardew Valley, and developer Eric Barone has decided that he won’t be patching it out. The good news is that it’s actually helpful, and you’re almost certainly never going to come across it unless you seek it out.

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The creator of Stardew Valley [official site] has opened up a little about plans for his next game, something mysterious that’s set on the same planet as Stardew but is not a sequel. Don’t expect to hear juicy details from Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone any time soon because he’s avoiding building heaps of hype but he does say that, similar to Stardew Valley, it will likely pick up another game or genre with space to explore and take it in his own direction. Read the rest of this entry »

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Stardew Valley is a common point of comparison for the witch school daily life RPG that Chucklefish are making — and not just because Chucklefish also published Stardew — but its relationships will certainly be more challenging. Chucklefish still haven’t formally announced the game tentatively named Spellbound but they are gabbing about it again, this time about how NPCs will have a little more independence and relationships will face more wrinkles and setbacks. For that authentic teen awkwardness experience, you see. Read the rest of this entry »

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The first green sprouts of multiplayer should push up into cutesy farm life RPG Stardew Valley [official site] at the end of this year, publishers Chucklefish have announced. Chucklefish are chipping in with multiplayer and expect it’ll be ready to launch properly in “early 2018”. For now, they’ve explained a little more of how it will work. Read the rest of this entry »

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‘Terrible’ only in the sense of their gaming capability. Honestly, I’m sure your laptop is lovely to look at and it was definitely a extremely sensible idea to spend all that money on it instead of buying a holiday or helping to save the pandas. Truth is, though, that playing recently-released games on the vast majority of laptops is about as effective as starting an online petition to uncancel your favourite television show.

A little discretion goes a long way, however. Sure, you may be denied the glossiest of exploding viscera, but it is entirely possible to keep up with the Joneses even on a Terrible Laptop that has no dedicated graphics card. Here are but twelve contemporary games – either recently released or still-evolving going concerns – that will indeed run on your glammed-up toaster. Additional suggestions below are entirely welcome.Read the rest of this entry »

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Navigate the gallery by clicking on the left and right arrows or use the left and right cursor keys on your keyboard!

Real life is rubbish sometimes, and there’s nothing that video games can do about that. But I know that if I’ve had a particularly tough day at work, then sitting down at my PC and visiting a different world can often be exactly what I need to unwind.Read the rest of this entry »

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Hannah just wanted to be a farmer. Not a male farmer. Not a female farmer. Just a farmer that didn’t have to suffer NPC after NPC lumping them into one gender or the other. Hannah’s hopes rose with the release of Stardew Valley, but after jumping into the farming sim they discovered it offered only male and female gender identities, with he/she pronouns to match. As someone who identifies as non-binary, Hannah couldn’t help but be disappointed.

“I’ve almost come to expect little to no representation,” says Hannah. “Being able to play a character that is different from myself is fun and interesting, but playing one true to myself I find is often more fun. It feels more real if you are in the world rather than just an observer playing a person in that world.”

Unwilling to sit idly by, Hannah took it upon themselves to broaden Stardew Valley’s gender diversity, modding the game so that NPCs referred to the protagonist with gender-neutral pronouns and replacing the gender symbols in the character creator with ungendered body-type indicators.

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Oh sure, Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles [official site] might look Legend of Zelda-y and okay, it is about a hero roaming the land to save it from evil, but get this: no combat. It’s Zelda filtered through Stardew Valley, a game where you save the world by helping people with your talents for farming, fishing, crafting, and such. No combat! Developers Prideful Sloth this week announced that they’ll release Yonder on July 18th and, while I’m a little hazy on quite what it is, this new trailer has me charmed: Read the rest of this entry »